Slideshow: Conservative Design Makes Japanese Cars More Reliable

A car that’s more reliable is a direct result of design philosophy and may not necessarily be engineered better. That's the takeaway from the latest Consumer Reports used car reliability survey, which once again placed Toyota and Honda at the top, far ahead of carmakers based in North America and Europe.

"The engineering in American car companies is just as good or better than anywhere else in the world, as is the manufacturing," Jake Fisher, director of auto testing for Consumer Reports, told us. "It's just that there's a whole different design philosophy."

Click on the image below to see how 18 autos fared in the Consumer Reports study. Is your car on the list? If so, is it time to trade it in?

The Toyota RAV4 -- with four-cylinder and six-cylinder engines -- got high marks for used car reliability.(Source: Toyota)

The reason American and European cars do so poorly in the magazine's annual owner reliability survey (appearing in the April issue) is that the automakers tend to incorporate more cutting-edge technology in their vehicles, Fisher said. Ford Motor Co., for example, plummeted in this year's reliability ratings, largely as a result of introducing new powertrains and chassis across much of its vehicle line. Similarly, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW received some poor marks after rolling out products that use eight-speed transmissions and turbocharged hybrid powertrains.

"The Jetta has a turbocharged hybrid on a mainstream model," Fisher said. "The Europeans have eight-speed automatics. They have dual-clutch systems. That approach isn't embraced by Toyota and Honda at all, because you can have reliability issues with those new technologies."

The problems associated with technology rollouts have been particularly evident at Ford. "Ford had always been the poster child for reliability, especially compared to the other domestics and Europeans," Fisher said. "But in the past, they benefitted from the fact that they had a pretty mature product line. Now that they are redesigning their vehicles, they've gone down quickly."

Ford received poor marks for the Edge, Explorer V6 4WD, F-250 Turbodiesel, Fiesta, Focus, and Mustang. But it wasn't alone in its subpar showing. The survey of 1.2 million vehicle owners placed 13 American products (and five European ones) on the list of 20 worst used vehicles. Only two Asian models -- the Kia Sorento V6 and Nissan Armada -- appeared on that list.

On the flip side, Asian vehicles dominated the list of top-rated vehicles. Ten Toyota models received the highest possible reliability rating, along with four Lexus vehicles. Honda, Nissan, Mazda, and Infiniti vehicles also appeared among the best.

"But if you look at Honda and Toyota, even when they redesign their vehicles, there's a lot of carryover," Fisher said. "They use similar chassis designs and similar engines. The new Honda Accord has the same engine displacement as the old Honda Accord."

The differences in design philosophy trickle all the way down to the smallest subsystems, such as navigation systems and cupholders. Mercedes-Benz, for example, spent months designing an elegant cupholder that's likely to appeal to the tech-hungry European market. In contrast, Lexus employs a simple, robust design that's unlikely to fail.

"Consumers probably assume that the Japanese manufacturers are at the forefront of technology," Fisher said. "But they're not quite as cutting-edge as the Europeans and the domestics. That's one of the reasons they do so well every year."

The Japanese have an 'old man' tactic. Design teams have at least one old guy who just kibitzes the design effort, mostly just asking difficult questions. They also apply a rigorous scheme of design validation. Manufacturability is always a design constraint: go heavy on design, light on QC; it makes sense: you can't inspect quality in and basic theory shows that if you are able to catch defects, some product must be marginal quality and some will have escaped defects. The most remarkable thing is that Japanese auto guys use less design hours but then there's little tolerance for cowboys in their approach.

Creating a truly good, reliable design is not easy not because it is difficult per se, but because lately designers have lost their orientation. I remember the old days when creating a new car design was made by actually building a mock model made with clay... there were OLD, experienced design supervisors that came to see the model, and quickly and swiftly pointed a finger to the faults, goofes and poorly designed aspects. Those old engineers had been educated in the industry and most of them raised step by step from the lowest levels in the company, learning along the years. Experience and being careful and trough is not divorced from being capable of innovating, but is a cultural matter.

Present day designers (in large numbers), are poisoned with the easy of (ab)using CAD, so they become careless and irresponsible, and you can easily spot them: they have never held a wrench in their hands, so they don't have the slightest idea on how to grab them!

On the other hand, I concur with other commenters who say that management is too focused on reducing costs at all means, getting millionaire bonuses and don't caring a thing about the future of their company prestige.

Only education and a strong culture of pride in manufacture could revert the tendencies.

I like the way the Corolla looks, and I used to buy a lot of Japanese cars in the 1960s and 1970s. But that was because they were much less expensive then, and simpler.

The last Japanese car I bought was a Datsun 510, and it was nearly indestructable, with one of the best independent rear suspension, rear drive systems out there.

These days a Corolla costs more than a Jetta, so I stay with the German cars, that I know have better parts suppliers and don't rust as fast in the winter salt. I tend to keep a car for 20 years, so I discover their weaknesses.

The lexus climate system is more reliable than the complex systems of other luxury makes that I expect get equal pampering. It is more reliable than the simpler systems in virtually every manufacturers vehicles excepting other Toyotas and Hondas. Einstein noted that "reality is an illusion, but a very persistent one". If the reliability of these climate sytems is only the appearance of reilability it is very persistent. ;^)

ANd this is true of every system and area of their vehicles in general regardless of the simplicity or complexity. Yes, complexity presents more opportunity for problems. It does not assure that they will happen. Poor quality control does that even in simple devices.

It is the plausible vs. the probable in my opinion. Your scenario is plausible-the evidence leads me to conclude that it is more probable that an excellent company can produce reliable products regardless of the complexity.

I've had the same experience, bobjengr. I have a 2004 Honda Odyssey with 189,000 miles on it. I've changed the fluids on time and the timing belt, which was the biggest-ticket item but certainly expected. I expect to get 250,000 to 300,000 out of it and I sill continue to trust it on long trips.

A few weeks ago, Ford Motor Co. quietly announced that it was rolling out a new wrinkle to the powerful safety feature called stability control, adding even more lifesaving potential to a technology that has already been very successful.

A well-known automotive consultant who did an extensive teardown of BMW’s i3 all-electric car said its design is groundbreaking in multiple ways. “We’ve torn down about 450 cars, and we’ve never analyzed anything like this before.”

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